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And since the higher exists, there must be the lower as well.
The Universe is a thing of variety, and how could there be an
inferior without a superior or a superior without an inferior? We
cannot complain about the lower in the higher; rather, we must be
grateful to the higher for giving something of itself to the
lower.
In a word, those that would like evil driven out from the All
would drive out Providence itself.
What would Providence have to provide for? Certainly not for
itself or for the Good: when we speak of a Providence above, we
mean an act upon something below.
That which resumes all under a unity is a Principle in which all
things exist together and the single thing is All. From this
Principle, which remains internally unmoved, particular things
push forth as from a single root which never itself emerges. They
are a branching into part, into multiplicity, each single
outgrowth bearing its trace of the common source. Thus, phase by
phase, there in finally the production into this world; some
things close still to the root, others widely separate in the
continuous progression until we have, in our metaphor, bough and
crest, foliage and fruit. At the one side all is one point of
unbroken rest, on the other is the ceaseless process, leaf and
fruit, all the things of process carrying ever within themselves
the Reason-Principles of the Upper Sphere, and striving to become
trees in their own minor order and producing, if at all, only
what is in strict gradation from themselves.
As for the abandoned spaces in what corresponds to the branches
these two draw upon the root, from which, despite all their
variance, they also derive; and the branches again operate upon
their own furthest extremities: operation is to be traced only
from point to next point, but, in the fact, there has been both
inflow and outgo [of creative or modifying force] at the very
root which, itself again, has its priors.
The things that act upon each other are branchings from a far-off
beginning and so stand distinct; but they derive initially from
the one source: all interaction is like that of brothers,
resemblant as drawing life from the same parents.
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